Tag Archives: Occult rock

Ancient VVisdom – Album Review

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Ancient VVisdom – Master of the Stone

Argonauta Rcords

Release date: 26/01/2024

Running time: 31 minutes

Review by: Alun Jones

9/10

Ancient VVisdom have never graced my ears before, so I was very keen to dive into their latest creation, “Master of Stone”, and share with you, good reader, my thoughts.

The band burst forth with ‘Sold My Soul to Satan’, which bounces along with a hook-riddled riff and captures the listener from the get-go. This song nicely encapsulates the style and theme for the album with absolutely no mercy. It’s a head banging, fuzz drenched rocker that’ll drag you along like a tin can hanging from the back of Lucifer’s wedding hearse.

That opener wasn’t a fluke, either: ‘The Adversary’ and ‘The Apollyon’ are both infectious blasts of hard rock with an air of the strange and arcane. The next track, ‘World’s Demise’, is a stomping, eerie acoustic number – all of a sudden Ancient VVisdom sound like Satanic troubadours heralding the end of the world. It’s a dramatic and clever display of skill and variety of musicianship.

If that acoustic approach reminded me of New Model Army, then ‘Ashes from On High’ is the most Metal track here. It chugs along like Slayer playing a retro style Sabbath cover. Brothers Nathan Opposition and Michael Jochum have obviously studied the masters well. If you like old school doom rock, maybe some Type O Negative and Danzig, right on up to modern scene stealers like Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats and Green Lung, you’re bound to love this album.

With songs that are catchy and memorable, and also dripping with a melancholy other-worldliness, ‘Master of Stone’ is a fantastic album. The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. This may be true in my case, but Ancient VVisdom are here to educate us all.

Find out more about Ancient VVisdom on Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.

This review is brought to you by Platinum Al and Ever Metal.

Green Goat – Album Review

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Greengoat – A.I.

Self-released

Release date: 26/01/2024

Running time: 38 minutes

Review by; Alun Jones

8.5/10

Opening with a Bladerunner-style synth led track that features a spoken word delivery of Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, is a bold (and different) move for a Stoner/Doom band. In a genre where, thematically, we’re usually content to contemplate the joys of weed consumption and the mysteries of the occult – usually via a 1970s Hammer horror aesthetic – this sci-fi launching point is a welcome breath of fresh air.

This is where we enter the album “A.I.” by Spanish doomsters Greengoat. It’s a great band name, and one that harks back to those pot and patchouli, candles and Peter Cushing tropes we’re used to. But ‘The Void’ takes us on a different tangent, with the Rutger Hauer voice over. Second track ‘The Seed’ takes this mellow intro and runs with it, till 30 seconds in – yes, it’s big fat chunky riff time! And what a big, fat chunky riff it is – slow and grinding, developing an irresistible groove with the drums dropping in, eventually exploding into a full force rocker.

The line-up of singer/guitarist Ivan Flores and drummer Ruth “Kalypso” Moya invoke a moody soundscape that borrows from spacey, harmonic passages of Pink Floyd and adds crunchy hard rock. It’s a euphoric concoction as the music builds. And oh, how it builds…

A more traditional stoner groove pervades the other songs on the album, with groovy riff workouts showcased across tracks like the head-nodding, tripped out title track and the fuzzy, Fu Manchu-like ‘Burn the End’.

Throughout the album, Greengoat weld together a progressive, futurist theme with some good, old fashioned, retro Sabbath style rockin’. “A.I.” will no doubt entwine itself around my conscious all the more as I play it in the weeks to come. This is a fine album with great ideas – the analogue age and the digital age tentatively strolling forward together.

Find out more about Greengoat on Facebook and Bandcamp.

This review is brought to you by Platinum Al in association with Ever Metal.

Green Lung – “This Heathen Land” Album Review

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Green Lung – This Heathen Land 

Nuclear Blast Records 

Release date: 03/11/2023 

Running time: 43 minutes 

Review by: Alun Jones 

9.75/10 

Halloween ain’t over yet, kids – at least not while the arch druids of Occult Rock, Green Lung, are back in town!  Yes, London’s finest purveyors of witchy, stoner incantations have a new album, “This Heathen Land” – released by Nuclear Blast Records, no less.  So gather ye round, my acolytes, whilst we indulge in the ritual listening of this opus.  Light some candles, burn some incense, imbibe potions of mind-expanding merriment.  And take all your clothes off!  

Album number three from Green Lung kicks off with a suitably 1970s intro, setting the magickal vibe right away.  ‘The Forest Church’ is the first track proper, which takes its inspiration from Danzig-approved cult folk horror classic “The Blood on Satan’s Claw”.  It’s a riffalicious chunk of doomy wonder, built around an organ drenched, moody base. 

‘Mountain Throne’ blasts out as a Sabbath style rocker, awash with those lush, skronky keyboards.  Then GL add some sauce to their sorcery with their ode to ‘Maxine (Witch Queen)’, an ecstatically catchy slice of psychedelic, garage rock-infused debauchery.  ‘The Ancient Ways’ and ‘Hunters in the Sky’ are both powerful yet groovy rock that’s reminiscent of the greats and gleefully conjures up its own aura.   

Green Lung really stretch themselves on ‘One for Sorrow’, which features huge, doom riffs and atmospheric synths with an epic chorus.  The mellow, folky sound of ‘Song of the Stones’ adds yet more colour to the palette, and still sounds essential – just like those more refined tracks on early Black Sabbath records.  The melodic, drama infused ‘Oceans of Time’ – inspired by Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” – adds a suitably bombastic and ambitious climax to the album.   

A word of wisdom for the initiate: the vinyl version of “This Heathen Land” shows exactly why physical media is still so important and potent.  My copy is green vinyl, in a gatefold sleeve with lyric booklet and a map of the UK, showing various otherworldly sites that have inspired the album.  This obsessive attention to detail is fascinating and illustrates just how much care and attention has been poured into the whole work!   

Green Lung is completely fearless, their ability to rise to the challenge and create art this meticulous is highly impressive.  And I should know, I’ve seen The Wicker Man and I own a black cat.  Seriously, my children: “This Heathen Land” is essential. 

You can put your clothes back on now.    

Find out more about Green Lung on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and their website.

This review is joint presentation by Platinum Al and Ever Metal.

Dopelord – Album Review

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Dopelord – Songs for Satan

Blues Funeral Recordings

Release date: 06/10/2023

Running time: 39 minutes

Review by: Alun Jones

8.5/10

Poland’s mighty Dopelord return with a humongously heavy album of slow rolling, occult driven doom on “Songs for Satan”.  Released via Blues Funeral Recordings, they’re celebrating the work of Lucifer in their temple of stoner sludge, and you’re invited.  Throw on your hooded robes and join the throng! 

Of course the songs are slow and heavy, and Dopelord manage to stamp their mark on the stoner-doom template by adding melody to their powerful, drawn out compositions.  Whilst the music rumbles along demonically, the vocals add a surprising, idiosyncratic sheen.  ‘Night of the Witch’ is executed in perfect, scuzzy doom style.  ‘Evil Spell’ is skull crushingly heavy, but both tracks feature sing along choruses that will steal your soul as well.

It’s difficult to get all the lyrical intent on this album without a lyric sheet, but it’s safe to say that the message here is a direct and scathing criticism of the Catholic church in Dopelord’s home country.  Whereas many a doom band is content to revel in Hammer Horror/Dennis Wheatley themes, Dopelord have taken this typical 1970s influence and added a real-world attack on religion too.

The album is book-ended by instrumentals, the latter of which, ‘Return to the Night of the Witch’, comfortably re-establishes “Songs for Satan” in the dreamlike, mellotron-soaked occult realm.  It’s a fine album, melding inexorable, fuzzy doom with themes of devil worship and hellfire.  Dopelord’s latest is genuinely well crafted, spell binding stuff.  I wouldn’t bother sending them a Christmas card, though.

Check out Dopelord on Facebook, Instagram, Spotify and Bandcamp.

This review is presented by Platinum Al in association with Ever Metal.

Platinum Al’s Top 10 Rock & Metal Albums of 2023

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Just as per last year, I compiled my Top 10 Rock & Metal albums for Ever Metal, which was published on the site. Now you lucky devils over here at the Virtual Hot Tub get to take a look too!

Absolutely ridiculous, that’s what it’s been like trying to pick just 10 albums to make my “Best of the Year” list.  There’s been a ton of great music in 2023.  Here’s my attempt to pick out my favourites:

10. The Sound of Origin – Man in the Arena

Sludgy, Grungy, Stoner Metal from Huddersfield, this album features Trouble’s Kyle Thomas on a couple of tracks adding even more class to a solid record.

9. Church of Misery – Born Under a Mad Sign

Gruesome Doom from the Japanese masters of Sabbathian serial murderer Metal.  Killer!

8. Torso – A Crash Course in Terror

John Carpenter synths meet chainsaw guitars in this brutal, 80’s horror inspired monster of an album from Torso.  Short but evil.

7. The Lords of Altamont – To Hell with Tomorrow, The Lords are now!

Psyche Biker Rock with skronky keyboards and attitude, The Lords of Altamont deliver a slab of Garage Punk’n’Roll to keep the party going.  YEAH!!!

6. Tankzilla – Tankzilla

Debut album from this dynamic duo, a righteous cacophony of pounding, groovy riffs that’ll make your body move like a serpent. 

5. King Kraken – MCLXXX

These guys blew me away when I saw them live back in February.  Their album is also a work of Groove Metal wonder.

4. Kvelertak – Endling

Norwegian Punk Metal with a Classic Rock sheen?  Yes please!  More joyous tunes from Kvelertak is nothing short of a true gift.

3. Blood Ceremony – The Old Ways Remain

Folk Metal, flute infused Occult Rock that sounds both ancient and modern at the same time, we waited a long time but this album will cast a spell on you.

2. Green Lung – This Heathen Land

I was one of many waiting anxiously for the third Green Lung album, and it didn’t disappoint.  Exquisite Occult Rock that’s doomy and hook filled, Green Lung have exploded with this record.

And number one is…

1. Desert Storm – Death Rattle

Three years ago, Desert Storm were number 2 in my 2020 Top 10, after a little band called AC/DC.  This year they deservedly take the top spot, with a massive album that I’m still enjoying months later, up against some stiff competition.   

Plus some honourable mentions:

Baroness, who’s latest album “Stone” probably would’ve made the top 10 if I’d listened to it sooner.

The Damned – their “Darkedelic” album may not be for all of Ever Metal’s audience, but it’s bloody great all the same.

Metallica – that “72 Seasons” thing was good but too long.  Nice try.

Keep coming back to Ever Metal and Platinum Al’s Virtual Hot Tub for all the best rock reviews!